Chapter 125 Dumbledore Sends a Meeting Invitation.
They crossed the grounds and arrived at Hagrid's hut.
The air was thick with the smell of chicken blood, and traces of it stained the damp earth. Hagrid was frantically busy in the nearby enclosure.
"These chickens weren't for Norbert, were they..."
Hermione cautiously lifted her robe to prevent it from getting blood on it.
"You know, it takes a lot, a lot of chickens to feed a dragon..."
"It looks like something murdered those chickens." Cohen pointed to the dead chickens near Hagrid.
This must be the second batch of chicks to die; Lockhart probably cleaned them up initially, and then Draco cleaned them up again these past few days.
"Oh—you've come..."
Hagrid looked up and saw the four of them, wiping his forehead with his muddy hands without a care for the dirt, which only made his previously sweaty forehead covered in mud—Hagrid realized this, but forgot his hands were still muddy, so the more he wiped, the more muddy it became, until his face was covered in a mixture of chicken blood and mud.
"Hagrid, stop…" Hermione, barely suppressing a laugh, stopped Hagrid from cleaning his face, using a cleansing charm to remove the mud.
Hagrid warmly led them into the house.
"Phew…" he let out a long sigh. "That's strange, this is the third batch of chickens to die at school. I was just setting up a trap—I have a feeling the Thestrals are getting hungry…"
"Thestrals steal chickens?" Harry asked, puzzled.
"Normally not, but lately they've been wandering around like strange things, probably looking for something new to feast on…" Hagrid guessed. "Has something happened at school?"
Harry eagerly told Hagrid what had been happening at school lately.
"What?!" Hagrid's eyes widened. "A student was attacked yesterday?"
"And the situation was exactly the same as Filch's." Harry continued, "A house-elf told me that a student is helping Voldemort resurrect…"
Hagrid shuddered at the mention of Voldemort's name.
"We have to tell Professor Dumbledore about this immediately," Hagrid urged. "It concerns the Man of Void—you all need to be careful too. I really don't know which student is helping him, why would they help such an evil creature…"
"Will Professor Dumbledore believe us?" Harry asked somewhat skeptically. In fact, he himself felt that all of this was too bizarre.
It was just the words of a house-elf from who-knows-where, and there was almost no credibility to it.
"Professor Dumbledore will believe you," Hagrid said with absolute certainty. "If you're worried, I can go talk to him—I need to ask him for something—I want to cast a spell next to the chicken coop so that the next batch of chicks can grow up healthy…" Cohen took
the suitcase; Hagrid had been very busy lately and hadn't had time to take care of Norbert.
But in reality, Norbert didn't need any care. Its life consisted only of eating and sleeping. The only thing that required human intervention was regularly casting a cleansing charm on Norbert's lair, because every now and then, it would be covered in bones and dragon dung.
"Hagrid is right,"
Hermione said to Harry and Cohen on the way back .
"We should have gone to see Professor Dumbledore earlier. Remember that strange creature that came to your dorm and woke you all up!"
"Indeed," Harry nodded. "But at the time, we were worried we'd be suspected of being the culprits of the attack."
"Now it's different. The attackers couldn't possibly be us," Hermione said logically. "When Colin was attacked, Cohen, Ron, and I should all have been in the dorm..."
"Ah, right, right," Ron nodded repeatedly, because he and Cohen had gone to bed early the night before.
Cohen didn't answer.
However, although Cohen said he went to bed, he actually sneaked out in the middle of the night—but no one noticed. "Wait
a minute..." Harry's face suddenly darkened as if he'd just remembered something.
"No," Harry said dryly. "Colin was attacked on his way to visit me, probably only a few doors away from me in the hospital."
And it happened right when Dobby came looking for him.
Dumbledore was also in the hospital then, and Harry had turned away, pretending to be asleep—he suspected Dumbledore knew he wasn't asleep.
Knowing just one more name, Voldemort, wouldn't have made much difference—they ultimately didn't tell Dumbledore.
But Dumbledore did come to see them.
After lunch, Dumbledore sent an older student to invite them for tea.
"Why do all secret discussions have to take the form of tea?"
Cohen asked, puzzled, on the way to the headmaster's office.
"It's more like getting your parents called in for a misunderstanding at school—"
"What does Professor Dumbledore want with us all of a sudden?" Harry asked anxiously.
"I guess Hagrid told him?" Hermione guessed astutely. "But Hagrid might not know the actual situation, so Professor Dumbledore sent us."
The senior student leading the way couldn't understand anything, so he simply played the role of "guide."
"Candy Spider,"
the senior student said to the gargoyle in the Headmaster's office.
"I don't like this command…" Ron shuddered, as if he'd been doused with cold water. "Spider…"
He was always afraid of spiders.
"Go in." The senior student left after leading the four of them up the spiral staircase.
They knocked on the Headmaster's office door after the staircase reached the top.
"Come in,"
Dumbledore's steady voice came from behind the door.
He sat behind his desk, where four chairs had already been placed.
Cohen was very familiar with the place, while the other three seemed a little reserved—they had never actually been inside the Headmaster's office before.
"Good afternoon, please have a seat. What would you like to drink? Tea, milk, or pumpkin juice?" Dumbledore greeted them with a smile. "Of course, there's also Cohen's favorite milk tea—"
Did he really have to single me out like that?
Cohen took the cup of milk tea that floated to his side, topped with a layer of brown caramel foam.
For the sake of the sweetness, he'd try to be a little more open with Dumbledore this time, giving him the impression that "Cohen trusts me more," making the old man happy.
"Hagrid told me you have something important to report, but he doesn't seem to know the details—would you like to tell me?"
Dumbledore's gaze swept over the four of them through the top of his half-moon spectacles, finally settling on Harry.
"Yes—yes, Professor..."
Harry swallowed hard and began to recount the events that had transpired to Dumbledore.
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(End of Chapter)